President Trump on Wednesday again urged Mike Pence to “do the right thing” and send the electoral votes back to the states for recertification, though the vice president has no unilateral power to do so.
During a “Save America” rally outside the White House, hours before a joint session of Congress will meet to tally Electoral College votes and affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, Trump said that Pence “has the absolute right” to reject the certification.
“I hope Mike is going to do the right thing,” he said. “Because if Mike Pence does the right thing we win the election,” he said.
“States want to revote,” he said. “The states got defrauded, they were given false info. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.”
The president continued to falsely claim that the election was “rigged” and that he won in a landslide.
“We will never give up,” he said. “We will never concede — you don’t concede when there is theft involved.”
“Our country has had enough, we will not take it anymore,” he said.
Trump also seemed to indicate he would seek retribution against Republicans who have not supported his efforts to contest the election, saying, “We have to primary the hell out of the ones that don’t fight.”
“If they do the wrong thing, we should never ever forget that they did,” he later added.
Trump’s comments come two days after he vowed to campaign against Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, who has pushed back against the president’s claims about voter fraud.